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Stories

What is a story?

A story is the smallest unit of deliverable work in RaiSE — one feature, one improvement, one refactor. It's not a Jira ticket or a task list. It's a structured cycle that produces traceable artifacts at every step, so you always know what was built, why, and how it was verified.

Every story follows the same six-step rhythm. This isn't bureaucracy — it's the discipline that makes AI-assisted development reliable. Each step feeds the next, and the review at the end feeds memory, which feeds future stories.

The six steps

Step Skill What happens Artifact produced
Scope /rai-story-start Create branch, define what's in and out story.md, scope.md
Design /rai-story-design Read the code (gemba walk), write a lean spec with examples design.md
Plan /rai-story-plan Decompose into atomic tasks with TDD cycles plan.md
Build /rai-story-implement RED-GREEN-REFACTOR per task, commit after each Code + tests
Review /rai-story-review Retrospective, patterns captured, architecture check retrospective.md
Merge /rai-story-close Merge to development branch, Jira transition, cleanup Merge commit

Why this structure?

Without structure, AI-assisted development looks like: prompt → generate → hope → fix → prompt → generate → accumulate tech debt. The AI doesn't remember what it learned, doesn't follow your rules, and doesn't know when to stop.

With stories, every piece of work:

  • Starts with scope — prevents "just one more thing" scope creep
  • Designs before coding — the gemba walk (reading actual code) prevents duplicate components and wrong approaches
  • Plans before building — atomic tasks with TDD mean each commit is verified, not just "it compiles"
  • Reviews at the end — patterns get captured in memory, so the same mistake never happens twice
  • Produces artifacts — every decision is traceable. "Why did we do it this way?" has an answer in the design doc

Story sizing

Stories use Fibonacci sizing to calibrate effort:

Size Story Points Tasks When to use
XS 1-2 1-2 Single-file change, config fix
S 3-5 2-3 Most features and fixes
M 5-8 3-5 Multi-module changes
L 8+ 5-8 Consider splitting into an epic

Start with XS or S stories to learn the rhythm. Scale up once the flow feels natural.

Example

/rai-story-start RAISE-1234 add-user-greeting e01-my-epic

Rai creates the branch, writes the scope commit, and you're ready to design. From here, each skill flows into the next — you don't need to remember the order, just invoke the next skill when prompted.

What's next